Distressed clothes as soon as carried a jolt to social norms—even within the on a regular basis second the place your mom requested with horror why you had been carrying ripped denims when you may afford denim from complete material. “Soiled Seems to be: Need and Decay in Trend” on the Barbican in London (on view by January 25, 2026) examines the signification of soiled as a shorthand for transgressing polished aesthetics, for dismantling impeccable craftsmanship and for grim world consumption habits by means of 60 designers or design homes.
“Soiled Seems to be”—a most intelligent title!—just isn’t the primary exhibition on the London venue that has checked out style as a type of judgment: “The Vulgar: Trend Redefined” was exhibited right here in 2017 (Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren in addition to Jean Paul Gaultier crossover in each exhibits). What overlap there could also be between soiled and vulgar just isn’t examined right here, nevertheless, although the concept of dirtiness (as, say, sluttiness, for instance) continues to be a part of the way in which girls are assessed and dismissed.
Dust is taken into account with largesse and subdivided thematically, with heritage designers within the higher galleries and rising designers within the decrease galleries. The present opens with a slightly on-the-nose show of dirt-flecked Wellingtons belonging to Kate Moss and Queen Elizabeth II, respectively. The mise-en-scène thereafter is sadly fairly disappointing—on the underside two ranges, pale draped sheets function an unremarkable backdrop, a missed alternative to create a dramatic dirt-as-mess impact.
Though parsed in some ways, grime is probably most eyebrow-raising when made synonymous with bodily fluids (that is deemed “the final taboo in style” by the wall textual content). Di Petsa’s underwear with menstrual blood stains or piss-darkened denim or leaking nipples from the My Physique is a Labyrinth S/S 2025 assortment would very doubtless create double takes if worn out and about. The biocouture of Alice Potts takes a extra refined strategy to bodily residue: she filters human sweat into an answer that blossoms into crystals. Right here, the answer is utilized to a classic discolored Madame Grès costume, which has crusted over with a glimmering mineralogy. Stains as errors of sloppiness, like Margiela’s lipstick print-dotted white menswear button-down or nebulous beige splotch on white skirt—which appear like real accidents—distinction with the extra inauthentic-looking fake grease stain on a Moschino tank high emblazoned with Antica Pizzeria.
Dust can also be interpreted as distressed: take a Junya Watanabe weathered denim patchwork costume (S/S 2019) or a Comme des Garçons look (A/W 1982) through which a black knitwear high with a gap is paired with a perforated skirt. The break up between Jap/Western attitudes is illuminated right here, the previous embracing wabi-sabi philosophies and a refusal to discard one thing as a result of it not appears to be like flawless. A 1993 Viktor and Rolf silhouette is definitely shedding tufts and fraying sequins, nearly like a pet, its large skirt layered with a skinny, fragile internet coming undone. Dust can also be depicted as char, exemplified by an Issey Miyake 1998 Pleats Please white costume sullied with burn marks, created in collaboration with artist Cai Guo-Qiang, or Robert Wun’s singed 2024 yellow silk high fashion look.
Much less aesthetic and extra symbolic is grime because the burden of a wasteful trade, of which style is likely one of the high three polluting offenders worldwide; its excesses fairly actually find yourself within the grime, in landfill. The present posits that some designers (Buzigahill, Miguel Androver, Marine Serre) try to remix discarded garments in attention-grabbing methods, however most choices look precisely like garments that nobody needed, reconfigured into questionable hybrids. Equally, there are examples of designers repurposing and recycling objects into the form of clothes, bringing to thoughts the ‘uncommon supplies’ problem from Venture Runway, from reused spoons to flattened bottle caps and plastic luggage. This leads to doubtful wearability. Maison Margiela makes an look with a vest of damaged porcelain (S/S 1989). (In some ways, the present is likely to be subtitled “Margiela,” since so most of the label’s appears to be like contain intentional stains, specific dishevelment and peculiar supplies.)
Dust, as explored by Hussein Chalayan, is probably probably the most poetic and innovatively forward of everybody else. In his graduate assortment in 1993, “The Tangent Flows,” he featured clothes buried for months in his pal’s London yard, relegating clothes to natural matter. There are 4 encrusted items hung right here above a rectangle of soil, harmonizing cloth and earth. Twenty years later, modern designers have interaction with the identical themes however much less impactfully: Solitude Studios’ After the Orgy (2025) makes use of garments and equipment immersed in a bathroom to focus on the unpredictable nature of the design course of when it’s mediated by Mom Earth and its microorganisms. These browned, rumpled and oxidized elements learn extra like a faculty science challenge than a conceptual style train—what was pioneering 22 years in the past is much less so now.
The proper exit music, post-exhibition? “Dirrty” by Christina Aguilera.
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